With gas prices topping $4 a gallon (I paid $3.99 in Effingham on Friday), folks are thinking more and more about alternative energy sources. That brings to mind the story today about AmerenUE considering whether to build — and how to pay for — another nuclear power plant in Callaway County.

The St. Louis-based utility…and its partner, Baltimore-based UniStar Nuclear LLC, will seek a construction and operating license as soon as next month for a $6 billion, 1,600-megawatt plant next to the existing Callaway nuclear plant.

AmerenUE executives won’t decide whether to go forward with the project until 2010, but they want to…

Sylvester Brown’s column for Thursday’s Post-Dispatch gives me an opportunity to talk about one of my favorite subjects: Customer service. Or the lack of it.

Sylvester shares the story of a 70-year-old woman’s dispute with DirecTV — in contrast to some good service she got from Ameren. He notes in the column a theme that I’ve often noted: “It doesn’t take much to make a customer feel appreciated.”

I’ve got loads of stories. I loved the McDonald’s clerk who listened to my daughter’s request for a small iced coffee. “We don’t have small,” she said. “Only medium and large.” I’ve also had good…

It’ll cost Ameren nearly $180 million to settle the mess that was made almost two years ago, when the Taum Sauk reservoir burst, spilling millions of gallons through Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park.

Here’s a few paragraphs from our story today:

Ameren Corp. reached a settlement agreement that will require the state’s largest utility company to pay $179.7 million in cash and property to compensate for damages resulting from the Taum Sauk reservoir collapse, the Missouri attorney general’s office said this morning.

Ameren’s settlement brings an end to months of negotiations between the St. Louis-based company and three state agencies, said Scott Holste, a…

Everyone surely remembers the disaster at the Taum Sauk reservoir in December 2005. Millions of gallons of water spilled from the mountaintop reservoir into Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park. The park ranger and his family were swept from their home and escaped with their lives. The park was a mess, basically closed to business since then.

Nearly two years later, on Wednesday evening, we’ll be treated to a half-hour special about the Shut-Ins and the progress that’s been made to restore the area. The televised special will air at 7:30 p.m. on KSDK Ch. 5.

Here’s the thing you need to know: The special…

I’m sure we all remember the July 2006 electrical storm that knocked out power to nearly a million customers. And the Nov. 30-Dec. 1 ice storm that did it again to about half a million. After those events, there was a great deal of Sturm und Drang about whether Ameren Corp. was doing enough to prevent these sorts of outages.

Was Ameren doing enough to keep trees trimmed away from power lines? Would that have made any difference? Was the Missouri Public Service Commission doing enough to hold the utility’s feet to the fire?
Our upcoming story will point out that with two…